QNX generates only a small fraction of BlackBerry’s revenue — results for the division aren’t broken out, but “software and other” accounted for about 8% of BlackBerry’s total revenue in its most recent quarter. However, the in-vehicle software market is one of the only areas left where the company can claim supremacy.

Even before things started to really go south for BlackBerry Ltd., it was clear that its purchase of QNX Software Systems in April 2010 was a transformative acquisition. The deal gave Research In Motion, as it was then known, the basis for its next operating system and, vitally, provided a foot in the door of the emerging connected-car market.

Owning BlackBerry Ltd. shares requires a strong stomach and over the last few months many investors have decided to say goodbye to the stock’s dips and peaks

BlackBerry’s decline over the next few years is well-trodden territory, with the once-dominant company’s share of the global smartphone market collapsing to 0.5% by the third quarter of 2014. But, unlike so many other decisions BlackBerry made in the interim, the acquisition of QNX was a success. The Ottawa-based company, which was founded by two University of Waterloo graduates in the early 1980s, had already established its presence in the global auto industry when it was acquired by Stanford, Conn.-based Harman International Industries in 2004. Harman greatly increased QNX’s presence in cars, making it an industry leader by the time the 270-employee company was sold to Research In Motion.

Today, thanks to QNX, BlackBerry commands more than half of the rapidly growing market for in-vehicle infotainment — software that manages everything from music and phone calls to navigation and weather forecasts in your car.

QNX generates only a small fraction of BlackBerry’s revenue — results for the division aren’t broken out, but “software and other” accounted for about 8% of BlackBerry’s total revenue in its most recent quarter. However, the in-vehicle software market is one of the only areas left where the company can claim supremacy.

“Not only is the demand in the individual vehicles skyrocketing, but the demand in each vehicle — how many systems can run on our operating system — is skyrocketing too,” Andrew Poliak, QNX’s global director of automotive business development, said in a recent interview.

He added that more than half of QNX’s revenue comes from the auto industry.

A 2013 forecast from the GSM Association of mobile operators predicted that the connected-car market will be worth €39 billion (about $56 billion) by 2018, triple its value in 2012, thanks to a sevenfold increase in the number of new cars with mobile connectivity.

And Mark Boyadjis, senior automotive technology analyst at IHS, estimates that there will be 400 million connected cars on the road by 2020, up from 82 million in 2014

Android’s future lies not in expensive, feature-packed smartphones for the tech elite. Instead, it’s all about getting smartphones to the rest of the world.

Google today officially launched Android One, its initiative for cheap-yet-high quality smartphones for developing countries. The program is debuting in India with three cheap devices starting at around $105 off-contract, and the company is also planning to expand the program to Indonesia, the Philippines, and the rest of South Asia by the end of the year.

While high-end Android devices will be a mainstay among gadget geeks, there’s a much bigger opportunity for Google in focusing on the more than 5 billion people worldwide that currently don’t have smartphones. After getting its hooks into those potential consumers early, Google will likely be able to make them lifelong customers.

Cheap Android devices have already helped the platform dominate smartphone market share (85 percent of smartphones shipped in the second quarter ran Android, according to IDC), but with Android One, Google is aiming to bring some stability to the low-end market. It’s similar to Google’s Nexus line, which highlights what Android can do for higher-end phones (while still focusing on relatively inexpensive off-contract pricing).

Google says it’s working together with phone and component makers by sharing reference hardware designs, which could lead to cheaper devices with high-quality specs. Just like Nexus devices, Android One phones will get updates directly from Google, so users won’t be beholden to the whims of their carriers. The devices also include features that are particularly useful for the developing world, like dual SIM capabilities, expandable storage, FM radio, and removable batteries.

Android Wear is launching in India with phones from Micromax, Karbonn, and Spice. They all share similar specs: A 4.5-inch processor, 1 gigabyte of RAM, a quad-core processor, and a 5-megapixel camera.- the phones look fairly indistinguishable now. But you can expect phone makers to get more creative with their designs down the line. Google also revealed new partners for Android One, including Acer, Asus, HTC, Lenovo, and Qualcomm.

Google has also partnered with Airtel in India to offer free updates over cellular for the first six months. During that time, Airtel customers can also download up to 200 megabytes worth of apps for free every month.

Google also plans to launch an offline version of YouTube in India, which will let consumers rewatch videos without eating up their mobile data.

“Access for access’s sake is not enough,” wrote Google VP Sundar Pichai, who leads Android and Chrome, in a blog post today. “With Android One, we not only want to help people get online, we want to make sure that when they get there, they can tap into the wealth of information and knowledge the web holds for everyone.”

And of course, it also helps that all of those new web users will likely be dependent on Google’s services.

Google is reportedly planning to release two new smartphones this year, one with a 5.9-inch screen and another with a 5.2-inch display, according to Phone Arena’s Michael Heller.
Rumors about Google’s next smartphone have been circulating the Web for months.

We first heard that Google is planning to launch a giant phablet-sized Nexus phone back in July, when Android Police said the device would debut in November. The phone was believed to be a joint effort between Google and Motorola, but Android Police’s report suggests it will launch under Google’s Nexus brand.

At the same time, Motorola has been rumored to be working on two new smartphones — its flagship successor to the Moto X known as the Moto X+1, and a separate device called the Moto S.

Motorola is believed to be testing two different model sizes for this Moto S — a 5.2-inch version and a 5.9-inch variant. This isn’t to be confused with Google’s alleged Nexus X, since Phone Arena says a 5.9-inch Nexus X is already scheduled to go to market. From what we understand, it sounds like the Moto S is a separate device and Motorola is testing it in two different sizes.

Which size makes it to market will depend on the success of the Moto X+1, which is said to be slightly larger than the 4.7-inch Moto X.

So how does this relate to Google’s new Nexus smartphones?

If Motorola decides to bring its 5.9-inch version of the Moto S to market instead of the 5.2-inch model, Google may repurpose that smaller Moto S and brand it as a second Nexus device. So, depending on Motorola’s choices, Google could launch a 5.9-inch Nexus phablet and a smaller 5.2-inch Nexus phone.

A 5.9-inch screen is unusually large for a smartphone. In fact, it’s just about one inch shy of a tablet. The Samsung Galaxy Mega, which comes in both 5.8- and 6.3-inch sizes, is the only other phablet that would compare in size to Google’s upcoming giant smartphone.

There’s no word on when we should expect these phones to debut, but last year Google quietly unveiled its Nexus 5 smartphone and Android 4.4 KitKat at the end of October. It’s also important to note that Google hasn’t confirmed any plans to release new smartphones in its Nexus line just yet.

Google is to start building its own self-driving cars, rather than modifying vehicles built by other manufacturers.

The car will have a stop-go button but no controls, steering wheel or pedals.

Pictures of the Google vehicle show it looks like a city car with a “friendly” face, designed to make it seem non-threatening and help people accept self-driving technology.

Co-founder Sergey Brin revealed the plans at a conference in California.

“We’re really excited about this vehicle – it’s something that will allow us to really push the capabilities of self driving technology, and understand the limitations,” said Chris Urmson, director of the company’s self-driving project.

He added that the cars had the ability to “improve people’s lives by transforming mobility”.

But some researchers working in this field are investigating potential downsides to driverless car technology.

They believe they could make traffic and urban sprawl worse, as people accept longer commutes as they do not have to drive themselves.

Flexible windscreen

The BBC was given access to the Google team to talk about the secret project, and see early renderings of the car.

It looks almost cartoon-like, it has no traditional bonnet at the front, and the wheels are pushed to the corners.

Google says it will initially build 100 prototype vehicles

It will seat two people, propulsion will be electric, and at the start it will be limited to 25mph (40km/h) to help ensure safety.

The most significant thing about the design is that it does not have any controls, apart from a stop/go button.

For early testing, extra controls will be fitted so one of Google’s test drivers can take over if there is a problem.

The controls will simply plug in, and Mr Urmson believes that over time, as confidence in the technology grows, they will be removed entirely.

The front end of the vehicle is designed to be safer for pedestrians, with a soft foam-like material where a traditional bumper would be, and a more flexible windscreen, which may help reduce injuries.

The vehicle will use a combination of laser and radar sensors along with camera data to drive autonomously.

It will depend on Google’s road maps, built specifically for the programme, and tested on the company’s current fleet of vehicles.

Google says it expects its self-drive cars to be on the road ‘within a year’

Ready in a year

Google recently announced that its self driving cars had covered 700,000 miles of public roads in autonomous mode, and that they were now tackling the tricky problem of busy city streets.

The company plans to build a fleet of around 200 of the cars in Detroit, with the hope of using them as an autonomous technology test bed.

“We’ll see these vehicles on the road within the year,” says Mr Urmson.

Advocates claim that autonomous cars have the potential to revolutionise transport, by making roads safer, eliminating crashes, and decreasing congestion and pollution. In the year to June 2013, more than 23,500 people were killed or seriously injured in road traffic accidents in the UK,according to government figures.

The view from Google’s self-drive car and its computer during tests

Ron Medford, previously the deputy director of the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, and now the safety director for the self-driving car team at Google, believes that number could be drastically reduced by removing the chance of driver error.

“I think it has the potential to be the most important safety technology that the auto industry has ever seen,” he said.

But Sven Beiker, executive director of the Center for Automotive Research at Stanford, cautions that driverless cars may still require human input in extreme circumstances and that people may forget how to operate their vehicles if they do not do it regularly.

This could be particularly dangerous in an emergency situation where the computer does not know how to react, and asks for input from a human who may not have been paying attention, he warned.

“You will not be able to fiddle around looking for the instruction manual in the glove box that you’ve never looked at before,” he said.

He equates it to people who drive automatics forgetting how to easily drive a car with a manual gearbox.

However, Google continues to struggle with its ability to charge advertisers higher prices for mobile ads, which are increasingly important with more and more consumers accessing Google’s browser through their smartphones.

Advertisers have proven reluctant to pay as much for ads on mobile screens compared to Google’s bread-and-butter desktop ads, which have been the main revenue generator at the firm.

Rates for mobile ads can be half as much as on personal computers, according to Needham & Co analyst Kerry Rice.

However, Google expects mobile ad prices to catch up with PCs eventually as it becomes easier for consumers to buy products using mobile devices, Google chief business officer Nikesh Arora said.

Technology — Internet ADJUSTING MODEL AND PRICE TARGET FOR STOCK SPLIT Key points
 We are adjusting our estimates and price target purely to reflect
Google’s previously announced 2-for-1 stock split.
 Class A shares will trade under the new ticker GOOGL, while Class C
shares will assume the GOOG ticker. Newly issued shares going
forward will be Class C shares. Class A shares will have one vote
each, while the non-traded Class B (management) shares will have
10 votes each.
 Given that Class C GOOG shares should be more liquid than Class A
GOOGL shares and that there is a “make-good” provision in place to
close any potential value spread arising from the voting
discrepancy, we do not expect a significant spread to materialize
between the Class A and Class C shares.Estimate changes
We are adjusting the number of shares to incorporate the stock
dividend. As a result, our share count goes to 685m, 689m and 693m
from 342m, 344m, and 346m in 2014, 2015 and 2016. As a result, our
non-GAAP EPS estimates go to $28.52, $33.61 and $39.01 from $57.04,
$67.22, and $78.02 in 2014, 2015 and 2016.
Valuation
We maintain our BUY recommendation and cut our price target from
$1,400 to $700 to adjust for the stock split. Our new target is based on
21x (unchanged) our 2015 non-GAAP EPS estimate of $33.61 (adjusted
from $67.22).